This invention relates generally to graphical user interfaces and more specifically to graphical user interfaces used for selecting network entities and/or managing a network.
Communication networks are progressively becoming more complicated. Along with more network entities being added overall, numerous other changes have resulted in increasingly complex networks being established.
For one, new services have been added that fall within a number of different categories including network, link, data transfer, and application services. These service categories are subdivided into numerous different services that utilize a variety of different types of network entities. For example, network services can include Wide Area Network Services (WAINS), Local Area Network Services (PLANS), Metropolitan Area Network Services (MANS), and Virtual Private Network Services (VANS) while application services can include email, http, or ftp, among others.
Also within current networks, a considerable number of different customers with a variety of requirements are being integrated within central networks. Some of these customers include educational, financial, government, and health care institutions which vary in what type and level of services are needed, as well as the bandwidth and complexity necessary.
Further complexity within today""s networks results simply from the large number of different network elements, transport standards, and interconnection possibilities utilized. For instance, possible transport standards include SONET, Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM), and Internet Protocol (IP) while interconnections using these standards could be made with a variety of different fiber optic cables such as OC-12, OC-48, OC-192, and OC-3X, as well as copper wire and microwaves.
The overall effect of these numerous different services, customers, and network entities within any one network is to make the network considerably more difficult to manage compared to previously established networks with simpler architectures. This difficulty with managing such a complex network results from the inability for those managing the network, hereinafter referred to as network managers, to observe all the relevant network information in a clear and concise manner.
One attempt at mitigating this problem has been to isolate the area of interest by allowing the network manager to select a geographical location for display. With this selection, only the network components within the specified area are shown to the network manager. Although this reduces the irrelevant information being shown to the network manager, the isolation is not sufficient in order to clearly display information relating to a single customer, service, and/or type of network entity when considering a network with large complexity.
The present invention can allow network managers to view network entities of interest more easily by only displaying a subset of network entities as defined by network features selected by the network managers. To this end, the present invention, according to one broad aspect, is a method of selecting a focused subset of network entities such that the network entities of interest are separated from other network entities within a larger set. This method of selecting network entities starts with a categorization being provided for each of a series of network entities within a network. This categorization has each network entity corresponding to one or more of a plurality of network features arranged within attribute layers which are each defined by a respective containment hierarchy of network features. Secondly, the method includes the step of receiving as focused network features one or more selected network features for one or more of the attribute layers. Finally, the focused subset of network entities of interest are selected by identifying which network entities are categorized with all of the focused network features.
Preferably, the network entities within the focused subset are displayed with all other network entities not being displayed. As well, the method preferably is able to highlight one or more of the network entities within the subset of network entities of interest. Yet further, the displaying of the relevant network entities is preferably done by illustrating a geographical region selected for a base view and further illustrating a plurality of network entities within the geographical region based upon a series of network features selected during filtering operation(s). In other embodiments, the displaying of the network entities is done with a logical view or a text list view.
Further features of the method according to the preferred embodiment include bookmarking, archiving, and monitoring features for sets of selected network features.
Additionally, further embodiments of the present invention provide a computer system or a graphical user interface that is adapted to implement one of the above described methods. Yet a further embodiment provides a computer readable medium having software stored thereon for instructing a computer to implement one of the above described methods.
Yet further, the present invention, according to other aspects, is a memory for storing a containment hierarchy, a graphical user interface for selecting network features, and a memory for storing information regarding network entities.
Other aspects and features of the present invention will become apparent to those ordinarily skilled in the art upon review of the following description of specific embodiments of the invention in conjunction with the accompanying figures.